POWt,f," d Wiener called the111) have deliberately sought to elÏ1ninate On this 1natter \Viener must be quoted at length: 63 life expenence and tested infor1nation as a great CIty. Computers C,lnnot invent sYlnbo]s 01 conceive ideas not already outlined in the very setting up of their progra1ns. 'Vithin its strict limits, a c01nputer can perfur1l1 logical operations intelligently and, given a progra1n that includes rando1n factors, can even sllnulate " ." b d . creatIon, ut un er no ClrCU1nstances can it drea1n of a 1110de of organiza- tion that differs fro1n Its own. Faced with the problem of translation fron1 one language to another-a function once hopefully assigned to the C01n- puter-its choices beco1ne absurd and its 1neanIngs scra1nbled, as in a case of brain damage. Man, on the contrî- ry, is constitutional1y an open systeln, reacting to another open syste1n, that of nature. Only an InfinitesÌ1nal part of either systeln can be interpreted by man, or C01ne under Ius control, and only an even 1ninuter portion, accord- ingly, fans within the prOVInce of the computer. .l\.t any 1n01nent, new and unexpected factors of subjective origin lnar upset or falsify the c01nputer's 1nost confident predictions-which has happened 1nore than once in election forecasts. Such order as man has achieved through his laws and custo1ns, his ideologies and 1noral codes, has proved precious-however infirln- precisely because it helps to keep both 01 gånic svstelllS open, without perll1;t- ting 1nan's capacity for integration to be totally destroyed by exorbitant quan- tifications or Irrelevant novelties. Many of the extravagant hopes for a c01nputer-dc)lninated society are sub- jective e1nanations froln the "pecuni- ar) -pleasure" center. Hopes for the total elimination of the worker have proved pre1natu reo For every 1nanual worker who is elitninated fro1n an an- cient craft or thrown off the as e1nbly line, it turns out, a bureaucratic substi- tutL, capable of feeding dnd nursing thL vast C} bernetic pseudo-organis1n thît is cOInIng Into existence, win be needed- if not direct1y at the point of produc- tion, then in business corporations and govern1nent depart1nents, In the uni- versities and research insti- tutes, in the sanatoria and hospitals engaged In the ex- pansion of both 1nental and corporeal 1nodes of control. The 1nost sterile for1n of work possible-paperwork, without even such In uscular exercise as 1nanual work af- forded-is rapidly increasing, and the resulting degenera- tIon of 1 esponsive and re- sponsible intelligence is pat- ent The notion that auto- "Language and Information" (1 964 ). Alike on grounds of pro1nptness and low cost and qualitative value, hUln,ln agents wet e preferable to the autn111a- tion. An even 1nore drîlnatic instance was provided by the "L\pollo 11 11loon landing At a critical 1n01nent in mak- ing the descent to the 1noon, the astro- nauts' c<'>lnputer repeated]}, announced its inability to handle the data. In hu- lnan terIns, it panicked. r'\S a conse- quence, the ground-control officers were for a In01nent on the point of abortIng the 1nission. Fortunately, they 1nade the radical decIsion to close off part of the computer and let the astlo- nauts alone 1nanage the final stages of the landing. In short, the efficiencv and applica- bility of the c01nputer depend upon the ability of its hU1nan en1ployers qUIte literally to keep their own heads, not 1nerely to scrutinize the prograln1ning but to reserve for the1nselves the right of ultÌ1nate decision. No auto1natic S) s- teIn can be intelligently run by auto111- atons-or by people who dare not assert human intuition, hll1nan aurono- Iny, hll1nan purpose. Curiously, \Vie- ner\ worries about auto1natIS1n had b n anticipated b) John Stuart lVlilL for sÌ1nilar reasons, in his "Essay on Liberty." "Supposing," Mill said, "that it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even chul ches erected and prayers said by 1nachinery-by auto1l1atons in hu- 111an forIn-it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these autolnatons even the 1nen and WOlnen who dt pres- ent inhabit the 1nOre civili7ed parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved speci1l1ens of what nature can and wIll produce." "\That Mill rea1i7ed at this early 1n01nent, and what '\ ie- ner later e1nphasized, is that the Sllln total of hU1nan potentialities in any c01111nunity is infinitely richer than the lilnited nU1nber that can be installed in a closed syste1n-and all autoll1dtic s s- teIns are closed and lÌ1nited, eVen those c01nputers that are capable of learning through use of the 1naterial already pro- vided 1\0 c01nputer can be as rich in If \\ e use, to achieve our pu rposes, a mechanical agency with u, hose opf"ratÎon ,ve cannot efficiently interfere once \ve hdve stdrted it, because the action is so fast and irrevocable theit ,ve have not the data to intervene before the action is com- plete then ,,\ e hdd better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine is the purpose \\; hich we really desire and not merely a colorful imitation of it 1'he individual scientist must \\, ork as a part of a process whose time sCelle is so long that he himself can only contem- plate a very limited section of [t. Here, too. communication between the t\\O parts of a double machine is difficult and limited Even ,vhen the individual believes that science contributes to the humdn ends which he has at heart, his belief needs a continual scanning and reëvaludtion \,'hich is only partly possible. For the individual sCIentist, even the partial appraisal of this liaison bet\veen the man and the process requires an imaginative forw'ard glance at history ,vhich is difficult, exacting, and only limitedly dchievable. And if \\'e adhere simply to the creed of the scientist, that an incomplete kno\vledge of the \:vorld and of our elves is better thdn no kno,vledge. ,ve can still by no means al\vays justify the naïve assumption th,lt the faster \ve rush ahead to employ the ne\v po\\- ers for åC- tion v , hich are opened up to us, the better it \vill be. We must ahvays exert the full strength of our imagination to examine where the full use of our nev , modalities may lead us. In the natural exultation of discov- ering how 1nany lifelike function can by abstraction be transferred to the c01nputer, its total effectIveness in a real-life situation hds often heen over- rated and its c()1l1petitive advclntage has been exaggerated. I et me give two significant instances. The 1\ational LI- brary of Medicine, in Bethesda, Mary- land, has an infor1nation-retrieval serv- ice (l'IFDLARS) designed to index the medica] literature in twenty-three hun- dred periodicals. This s)'steln has been in operation since 1963, and by 1968 half a 111illion articles were in storage. To compare the results of a C0111puter- ized search with those achieved in the con ven tional 1nanner, two staff 1nC1n- bers of the Radcliffe Science Library, in England, c01npiled a list of references on the SaIne subject, covering the period covered by the !viEDI ARS taped record. Though nine relevant references in MED- LARS were not discovered by the library staff, they did dig out thirteen relevant refer- ences not Incl uded in the IEDLARS tapes. This con- firmed the negative verdict of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel a mathematical logician, in his 1